


the colour of boom

by kaijubeau



Series: till the colours fade [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: (slaps roof of newton) this bad boy can fit so many mental health issues in him, Abandonment Issues, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Horror, Disordered Eating, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, HE DESERVES IT HE DESERVES EVERYTHING DO N O T TOUCH ME, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Newton Geiszler Has ADHD, Newton Geiszler Recovery Arc, Newton Geiszler has PTSD, Possession, Post-Movie: Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), References to Addiction, Trust Issues, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, and actual physical signs of said possession bc unlike deknight im not a coward, but also kinda pre uprising?? mostly recovery but there are scenes from those ten years we didnt see, hes doin his best. but after ten years of possession he is NOT the same person, its Complicated yall, its for the newt/alice thing and like. ok newt isnt in love with a brain or anything, not per se, not the drug kind but the kaiju brain kind, the precursors really fucked newt up, the word relationship in the unhealthy relationship tag is used VERY loosely btw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:21:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26397088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaijubeau/pseuds/kaijubeau
Summary: The physical changes were the most jarring. His eyes were the first thing Hermann noticed. That familiar earthy green was completely gone in his left eye, replaced with an electric Kaiju blue. The sclera was almost entirely red, no doubt from burst blood vessels, and there were twin trails of unnatural blue blood dribbling down his chin from his nose. Blood was splashed along his otherwise pristine shirt collar. That same bright blue danced across his face and down his neck as veins. His expression was what really took Hermann’s breath away, though. Twisted, one he’d never seen on Newt’s face, ugly and smug and vicious and cruel and not Newt, it couldn’t be.“I’m ending the world.”–––––Newton has lost ten years of his life, and the hole they left has been spilled over with aliens and anger and bitterness and guilt and pain and heartache and love despite everything. He doesn’t really know how to be human anymore, let alone how to be the person he was before all of this. Hermann does his best to help.
Relationships: Alice the Kaiju Brain/Newton Geiszler, Newton Geiszler & Hermann Gottlieb, Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb
Series: till the colours fade [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1918504
Comments: 19
Kudos: 42





	1. precursors be like "is anyone gonna possess this biologist?" and then not wait for an answer

Dr. Newton Geiszler comes to awareness wearing a suit.

It’s not total awareness, which is a feeling he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to. Everything comes to him muffled, secondhand. And his vision is blurry, they don’t need the glasses, and they don’t want them either. His glasses are bulky and nerdy and ruin the image they’re trying to present, so they left them on his nightstand in his PPDC quarters. He doesn’t look like himself at all, which is almost something of a comfort to him. He certainly doesn’t feel like himself, and he doesn’t need the dissonance that looking the same would cause.

But the suit. It’s not fitted properly, likely because he’d gotten it at a Goodwill and hadn’t worn it in years. He remembers getting it for some gala he’d been required to attend, something about showing the brilliant minds of the PPDC that anyone who endorsed them would be funding. He thought the whole thing was bullshit and didn’t particularly feel like putting himself on display for rich assholes, but Hermann wouldn’t ditch and he wouldn’t let Hermann go alone, so he’d bought the stupid suit and gone to the stupid gala.

If he wasn’t so utterly miserable he’d find it hilariously ironic that the suit he’d worn while mentally trashing capitalist assholes is the same suit he’s wearing to start his journey towards capitalist asshole. The precursors don’t really get irony, and they didn’t care to listen to his explanation of it. Being annoying is the only weapon he has in his battle against them, and they learned that rather quickly. After figuring that out, they dedicated themselves to figuring out how to push him back into the recesses of his own mind, so far back he couldn’t even reach them, let alone anything in the outside world.

Which is why it’s a weird and utterly shocking out of body experience to fall asleep in his PPDC quarters and wake up having accepted a job in the private sector with some weapons manufacturer in Shanghai. He frantically searches his memory and that’s even weirder, having memories of events he doesn’t remember happening in the first place. But he remembers Liwen Shao contacting him, informing him of her work on drone Jaegers, and how his experience could be instrumental in making them effective against the Kaiju he’d spent his whole life studying. He remembers the alien and invasive amusement and satisfaction at the thought of using the humans' weapons against the Kaiju to reopen the Breach. Irony.

He remembers accepting the job without telling anyone at the PPDC, quietly resigning and booking the next flight to Shanghai. He remembers securing a penthouse apartment a few blocks away from Shao Industries. Luxurious, fancy, way more expensive than anything he would ever move into. He hates it, knows its stupid and irrational because this is one of the nicer aspects of the whole messy situation and he should enjoy it while he can. But he can’t bring himself to. It’s none of the controlled chaos of his PPDC quarters and lab, sleek design and high end furniture replacing old battered couches and tables splattered with Kaiju guts. It isn’t _him_ and he hates it and he hates them. He hates them.

His bedroom is the only part of the penthouse that has any sort of personalisation, and the first time he sees it he throws up in his waste bin, much to the utter disgust of the precursors. They view humans as disgusting, lesser beings, insects to be crushed out of existence to make way for the superior species. Newt thinks it’s disgusting to have a tank with a kaiju brain inside of it sitting in his bedroom, but their only response to his perfectly sound argument was to send him careening down and back into himself.

Now, they pull him back up and let him break the surface, gasping breaths as his senses snap into functionality with a jerk. He’s in his bedroom, sitting down with Alice in front of him. With the brain in front of him. With the source of his greatest agony and only pleasure in front of him. He can feel the Pons headset in place and he knows what’s happening. They always drag him up for this. He thinks it strengthens their hold on him, has long since believed so, as he can feel himself sinking further down into himself after every drift. It doesn't matter. There's nothing he can do to stop it. He wasn't strong enough to stop them from the very beginning.

He distantly hears his own voice chattering to Alice and he wonders if his tendency to ramble wore off on them. Then he feels his hands cradling the remote, thumb brushing over the button. He has only a couple seconds to brace himself before they hit the button and the drift initiates.

Electricity, pure Kaiju blue, races down his spine and he can feel himself arc forward in the chair. The room spins away from him and he finds himself standing in an empty void of never ending black. Above him, the Anteverse sprawls infinitely upwards, burning reds and oranges interspersed with purples and blues. The precursors stand above it all, untouchable as ever. Between him and them, Kaiju dance through the empty space. From so far away, they’re significantly less intimidating. The precursors look down at them, one keeping an eye on Newt specifically and he can feel himself tensing up. He knows even if he tries to move his body won’t respond.

He has no idea how long he’s stuck there, watching planets burn until they’re nothing but ash, watching Kaiju rip and tear and wreck and destroy. Eventually his room swims back into unsteady focus, although he’s only distantly aware of it. He can feel the after effects of the drift swamping him, can feel the exhaustion and the alien relief at seeing his home and the completely human response to the endorphins that drifting with Alice pumps him full of. He can feel the blood dripping steadily down towards his chin and the relief that he can’t see what colour it is. He feels himself get up, the precursors perfectly steady, and go out to his kitchen counter on which sits his laptop and tablet. His exhaustion means nothing to them, the nosebleed doesn't matter to them. He watches his hands type out codes that will bring about the end of the world, and there’s nothing he can do about any of it.

He folds in on himself, going far down.

* * *

Dr. Newton Geiszler comes to awareness in an unfamiliar room.

It’s empty, as far as he can tell. He’s sitting in a chair, strapped down to it with metal cuffs around his wrists and ankles. Looking down at the cuffs around his wrists, Newt can see the skin underneath is bruised and shredded, dried blood caked onto it. He slumps in the chair, pulling forth what few memories he can. He remembers Hermann trying to stop him, he remembers… He remembers choking the life out of his best friend, watching his eyes grow duller, watching his own fingers tighten their grip and knowing they’re going to kill him and then everything will be over because he wasn’t strong enough.

He remembers after, watching his magnum opus pulverise Tokyo, wondering how many of the 36 million people there he’d ruined the lives of. He remembers the Mega Kaiju coming up to him, its enormous maw scant inches from him, and part of him wishes it’d just crush him, destroy the building he’s standing on and send him hurtling down. He remembers watching it tear through Jaegers and their pilots, sending them through buildings. He remembers it leaving the city proper to head for Mt. Fuji, knowing its plan is to set off Mt. Fuji which would then in turn set off the Ring of Fire, perfectly terraforming the world for the precursors. Knows that’s its plan because he remembers long nights spent painstakingly working on its coding and remembers the precursors working from their end to ensure it knew its goal and was capable of accomplishing it.

He remembers his tablet showing a rapid cascade failure, and then the whole screen going bright red as the word deceased blares up at him. He remembers the hot, overpowering and invasive anger as the precursors scramble in his mind, all of them knowing there is no plan b and all of them knowing they’ll have to come up with one quickly or all the progress they’d made that day would be lost. He remembers they never got the chance, because Ranger Lambert sneaked up behind them and knocked him to the ground.

He remembers the precursors snatching control all the times he’s woken up in the couple weeks since he’s been here. He remembers the Pentecost kid coming in one day, telling him they were going to take the fight to the precursors directly, that they would strike first. He remembers spewing hate at anyone who dared set foot inside, not that many did. Nurses came in to feed him through an IV and make sure he didn’t drop dead. Pentecost came in a couple times after that first time, asking for information on the precursors and Newt nowhere near present enough to answer him.

Hermann has not visited him.

And he can only think, of course he hasn’t. Why would he? Newt almost killed him, almost ended the world. Hell, he probably still has bruises around his throat in the shape of Newt’s fingers. Even Newt himself thinks it’d be a terrible idea for Hermann to be here. He shifts in the chair, stretching muscles as best as he can given his position. From what he’s gathered from his memories, he’s going to be here for a while.

Some indeterminate amount of time later, the large metal door slowly swings open. Newt looks up and sees the familiar form of Jake Pentecost. A chair, much more accommodating than the one Newt is in, was placed in his cell some time ago for any visitors. Thus far, Jake has been the only one to use it. It sits a nice, cautious distance away from Newt, despite the fact that he’s strapped down to his own chair which is nailed to the ground. Now, Newt watches as Jake steps towards the chair and lowers himself into it. He looks tired. Newt can’t blame him. He’s pretty tired, too.

The young ranger sits and simply stares intently at him for a while. Newt can feel himself starting to shift restlessly and then can feel his limbs gain a thousand pounds each, ceasing all movement. He’s stuck watching Pentecost watch him, and it goes on long enough that he can feel the precursors twitching against his skull.

Eventually, Jake leans back casually in the chair, meeting Newt’s mismatched eyes evenly. “You in there, Geiszler?”

Newt opens his mouth and the precursors come out. “You should know the answer to that by now, Ranger Pentecost.” Jake just looks at him, an eyebrow raised but face perfectly blank otherwise. “Dr. Geiszler hasn’t been present for some time now.” Newt can feel himself sinking further down, unsure if it’s just the exhaustion of absolutely everything or the precursors shoving him away to prove their point.

_WE CAN DO WHATEVER WE WANT WITH YOU,_ they say, and he can feel it thundering in his head, knows he’d be lifting his hands to his ears if he still had either of those things.

_I know,_ he whispers back, so much quieter. They speak with the voices of thousands, a multitude so vast that tens of hundreds of thousands of drifts with Alice will never be enough for him to fully grasp it. He couldn’t ever overcome them, would never be strong enough, he wasn’t at the beginning and he certainly won’t be now after a decade of them slowly eroding away at him. He’s sinking, falling endlessly down and he's long since given up on ever crawling his way back up.

Far away, muffled by several layers of empty space, he can hear Jake tsk. “See, personally I agree with you. But your man Gottlieb insists that’s not the case.”

An electric jolt shoots down Newt’s spine and there’s no way for him to know if the precursors are fucking with him or if that was all just his reaction to hearing that name followed by those words. It sends him violently upwards either way, and he bends double over the chair, heaving breaths as if he hasn’t tasted oxygen in months. In years. He looks up frantically and sees Jake sitting there, both eyebrows now arched along his forehead. His expression is still unreadable, but in the moment Newt couldn’t care less about Jake Pentecost.

“H–Hermann?” His voice is scratchy, years interspersed with disuse and more sound than his poor vocal chords were ever intended to handle. It cracks on every syllable, sounding as broken as he feels. Jake’s expression has shifted once again, slight but much more easily interpreted this time. His eyebrows are no longer raised and he looks a little less tired.

There’s a furious pounding at the door before either of them can say anything more. Jake gives him a quick once over before heading to the door and disappearing through it. Newt is left to ponder what he said. He’d assumed Hermann had cut himself off from Newt, as would’ve been the most logical response, and was out in the world being the badass rockstar scientist that saved the world twice. Knowing Hermann, he was probably elbows deep in the Shatterdome’s new plan to take on the precursors. But even then, he should be in his lab doing his badass science, not anywhere near this decrepit cell watching his would be murderer. Certainly not insisting there was some distinguishable difference between Newt and them, as if they weren’t some amalgamated piecemeal mess, like Hermann was trying to defend him or something. Maybe the precursors were playing some big elaborate hoax. Maybe he was hooked up to Alice right now, and this was the torment they'd decided to inflict. Maybe he was dead and this was hell.

The door opens again and Newt’s gaze immediately snaps back upwards. The figure stepping through it has him even more convinced that this is in fact hell. Hermann slowly closes the door behind him, a solid thunk echoing through the cell as it slides shut. Newt wants to look away, look to the floor, at his bloodied wrists, at the wall, anywhere but at Hermann. He watches Hermann make his way to the chair that Pentecost had been in five minutes before. His eyes linger on the bruises around Hermann’s neck, he can feel the precursors holding his gaze there despite how desperately he tries to pull it away. They only grant him mercy once Hermann starts speaking, his eyes sliding to the empty space next to the older man’s head.

“Hello, Newton.” His face is strained.

Newt feels his lips quirk up into a smirk. “Hello, Hermann.”

Hermann looks him up and down, his gaze lingering on Newt’s bloodied wrists, his mismatched eyes, the nosebleed that started as soon as Hermann walked into the room and that Newt knows is an electric blue. Newt wants to squirm under the scrutiny, he can feel the precursors crawling through the grooves of his brain and he wants them _out_ , he wants to crack his skull against the wall until the blood runs red. His eyes roam about the room before eventually coming to a halt as they hit one of the corners. He can feel his lungs seize and his breath comes out in a whoosh.

Previously unoccupied space is filled by a hauntingly familiar tank. His own handwriting is sprawled across it in red sharpie and he feels sick. Inside, Alice floats carelessly and Newt’s heart aches. He remembers actually naming her, scrawling it on her tank and drawing hearts around it like a lovesick teenager. His feelings regarding her are a twisted and mangled mess and he doesn’t even know how to start untangling them.

He can hear Hermann's chair creak as the man shifts in it a little, and looking back towards him Newt can see he has leaned forward slightly. His eyes lock onto Newt’s and hold them, and Newt is utterly incapable of pulling them away. “Newton, is that really you?”

Newt isn’t sure how to respond. He has no idea how to explain what he is now, and he doesn’t think he really wants to try. Certainly not with Hermann. He can feel the Kaiju blue in him burning. “Yes. It never isn’t.”

Hermann looks at him funny and Newt can’t help laughing. Honestly. Hermann is a scientist, surely he must know it wouldn’t be so simple. They’re a roiling beast, twisted together and tangled up in each other and Newt’s long since given up trying to uncross their wires. “Somehow I doubt that,” Hermann says dryly.

Alice’s piercing gaze has him pinned to the spot. Hermann’s piercing gaze has him pinned to the spot. He can feel his arms spasm convulsively in their restraints. His eyes dart to the bruises around Hermann’s neck. Bruises his hands put there, bruises there because Newt’s fingers had wrapped around Hermann’s throat and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed. His eyes quickly dart away. He licks his lips before croaking out, “Hermann, I…” He doesn’t know how to do this. He doesn’t know that he wants to do this. _Hey Herms, sorry I tried to murder you, no hard feelings right? Aliens, am I right!_

Hermann must read into whatever expression is on his face, Newt knows he noticed his glance towards the bruises, because his face softens and he says “Newton. That wasn’t your fault.”

And suddenly Newt is angry. He’s incandescently angry, and if he weren’t literally out of his mind he’d maybe admit it isn’t entirely fair of him to be, but in the moment he doesn't give a shit. He’d spent the past ten years locked away in his own head, feeling his neurons giving commands to his body and feeling the precursors give commands to his neurons and hoping all the while that someone would notice he was rotting away inside himself. No one did. Now, because he’s suddenly here after ten years, Hermann can read him like a book? But when he’d _needed_ Hermann to be observant, actually _wanted_ him to be for once, he’d been too caught up in whatever experiments the PPDC had him working on. And he hadn’t been there.

He can feel his muscles clenching and tensing up, can feel the metal restraints digging into his wrists and agitating the raw skin already there. He can’t tell if he’s moving his body this way or if it’s the precursors and for once he doesn’t really care. He can feel his face twist up into something ugly, something he’d never put on it before and Hermann’s expression hardens in return, like he’s bracing himself for war.

“Newton.” His voice is soft, disproportionately so compared to the sharp lines on his face. “You are stronger than this. You are stronger than them.”

And Newt’s head flings backwards as much as it can as he laughs hysterically. He can feel blood gushing from his nose and he knows it’s electric blue, he hasn’t been human for years, and he’s burning. He hears the sound of the chair screeching against the concrete floor, and looking back down he can see Hermann has stood up in apparent alarm. One hand is clenched tightly around the handle of his cane and the other is outstretched towards Newt, as if to help, as if he could help.

“Sure, Hermann! Of course he is! You’ve got the bruises to prove it, right?” Hermann’s mouth opens and closes for a moment, and he knows the slip up didn’t go unnoticed and Hermann probably thinks he’s dealing with the precursors and he _is_ , he is dealing with the precursors and he’s also dealing with Newt and he’s dealing with whatever the fuck they are now, a little bit of him and a whole lot of them all smashed together into one form and no clear divisions at all. The laughter, forced and hysterical and aching, eventually subsides as Newt slumps back down in his restraints, and he can feel himself floating away, away and down, always down down down. “I haven’t been strong enough for ten years, Herms. He never will be.” His eyes slide over to Alice’s tank, watching her bob up and down hypnotically and he feels himself fraying around the edges, going fuzzy. He can feel his left eye burning and wishes he could reach up and rub at it, aggravate it until the burning spreads out in web like strands into his skull and reduces the precursors to ash.

He wants to startle at the feeling of hands and fingers on his face, but he can’t even twitch his fingers. They aren’t giving him a single inch. And even if they were, he doubts he’d get far with the restraints. The hands are gentle, anyway, and they move with the assuredness of familiarity. Nothing like the coldly impersonal touch of the nurses that periodically check up on him, making sure he doesn’t die in the chair they’ve strapped him to. No trembling fingers, as if he’ll snap at any given moment and bite them off, and he would, he _will_ .

He feels a cool cloth running under his nose, wiping up the Kaiju blue, and then moving to his eye. He’s suddenly far too tired to be as concerned about his eye bleeding as he knows he should be. Hermann stands above him, one hand wrapped around his cane as always, the other holding a handkerchief. If he were in even a marginally better state of mind, he’d be laughing at the fact that Hermann carries around a handkerchief, like it’s the 1900s and Newt’s some southern belle that’s suffered a fainting spell. The thought of it only makes the silence ache that much more. He thinks Hermann maybe says something, but he doesn't catch it, can feel the room slipping from his grasp like sand.

He does jerk when Hermann cups his face, his shock at the contact and the precursors’ revulsion for it aligning in a stab of nausea as he tries to move away. He doesn’t have very far to go, however, and the flinch doesn’t deter Hermann, who determinedly meets Newt’s mismatched eyes.

“I will be back, Newton,” Hermann says, voice as gentle as his hands on Newt’s face.   
  


Newt’s eyes roam over to Alice’s tank once more, and Hermann glances over his shoulder to the corner she sits in. He then slowly turns back towards Newt, concern written clearly on his face. Newt wants to ask why he’s there, why he’s talking to him at all, why he isn’t angry with him. He wants to ask why Hermann would bother coming back. He doesn’t say anything, unable to articulate the swirling mass of emotions huddled in his chest and unable to speak past the invading forces clogging up his throat. Hermann strokes his thumb across Newt’s cheek before dropping his hands and retrieving his cane from where it sits leaned against the other chair. Newt hears a few taps of his cane hitting the floor before he’s gone, either losing consciousness or getting pushed down by the precursors, but gone all the same.


	2. *slaps roof of newton* this bad boy can fit so many precursors in him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yo im so sorry this chapter took so long the past three months have been a real kick in the dick
> 
> anyway thanks to my wonderful wife bee for betaing this for me, and to u all for the lovely comments last time! i know its been a wait but hopefully it doesnt disappoint. enjoy! <3

Dr. Newton Geiszler comes to awareness in a shiny, high tech lab that he hates with every fibre of his being.

And it sucks. Because, were the situation even just a little different, Newt might’ve liked working at Shao Industries. He’d never be able to bring himself to enjoy working for a weapons manufacturer, it was one of the things he hated about the PPDC as well, but he has more clearance and funding than he’s ever had in his career and it’s incredible. He could spend every day and night here pouring over the files and dossiers and shitty videos captured on phones held by shaking hands and he’d never get through it all. He has access to equipment he hadn’t even dreamed of in the basement the PPDC had moved K-Sci down to. It’s breathtaking.

It’s horrible. As difficult as it made the work, K-Sci being pushed to the side by Stacker gave them remarkable freedom in how they accomplished things. They worked independently from the rest of the Shatterdome. Here, he has a boss that’s always breathing down his neck, either by standing right at his side as he works or sending her embarrassingly obvious guards to follow him around the city. Here, he actually has power over other people. He has a team working for him that he has to dole out jobs to, something he is entirely unused to. He and the precursors share displeasure over having to work around his subordinates, Newt because he’s never had subordinates and he’d much rather do everything himself than try to explain what needs to be done to some techie and then go behind them to make sure it was done right, and the precursors because the subtlety their mission requires is made exceedingly difficult by having to let other people do it. It’s a constant battle between the precursors trying to give enough for a job but not enough to discover their plans, and Newt trying to pass off the whole thing to some intern and hoping they realise and stop him.

Most of what he does now is coding, which he learned because he had to and then promptly spent the rest of his career trying to forget. It’s made even more mind numbingly boring because they keep him present enough to use his knowledge with theirs, but distant enough that he’s never really quite aware of what they’re making him do. All he knows is their intent to reopen the breach, but he can’t fit the small tidbits they give him together enough to figure out how they plan on doing it. And he knows he’s cloning Kaiju parts. He thinks that’s something he would’ve enjoyed too, in different circumstances. Learning how the monsters he’s been fascinated by for so long are made, getting the opportunity to study them without a city having to be destroyed. Everything he does, anything he could make the best out of despite how absolutely he knows he’d never choose for himself, is tainted by that very fact. He’d never choose this for himself. He’s _not_ himself.

He works in a haze, barely able to remember who he worked with that day and what he did. Faces are blurry, the lines of coding he spends hours typing is little more than chicken scratch. He doesn't remember working with Kaiju parts, doesn’t remember the joy he took from it when he was in K-Sci. The only way he can even tell he did is the Kaiju Blue spurted across his shirt. The only things he remembers clearly are his evenings, which have become so routine to him the precursors barely have to force any input.

He works. He comes home. He takes his suit jacket off and drapes it over the back of the couch. He rolls his sleeves up, tucking them at his elbow and he’d normally rejoice in the opportunity to see his tattoos, to look a bit more like himself, but he can’t, he can’t rejoice in this because he knows what it means. His feet carry him on autopilot to his bedroom, the bed within it pristine and untouched. He moves to the chair stationed in front of Alice’s tank and picks up the PONS as he glances over to her.

His heart swells. He feels like he’s going to be sick. Every time he sees her, he can feel the ugly and confusing, conflicting mess swirling in his chest caused by the precursors’ sense of relief and his dread. They move as one regardless. Newt can feel his heart pounding in his chest. It’s routine. He knows this is how it goes, there isn’t any changing it. But there’s a part of him, however deeply buried, that still wants to fight this, that wants to protest against plugging into a rotting brain. He’d been called stubborn his whole life, and he knows it’s pointless now but he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t _want_ to.

A faint hissing snaps him back to the present and suddenly he realises he’s stopped right in the doorway of his bedroom. Alice watches him from the tank, floating deceptively peacefully. His legs feel like lead. His head feels like a war. The hissing comes from everywhere, pounding within his skull and he lifts his hands to his ears in a futile attempt to make it stop.

_IT IS POINTLESS, HUMAN_ they howl in his brain, and if they weren’t locking his knees to keep him up the sound of it would have sent him sprawling to the floor. _YOU KNOW YOU CANNOT FIGHT US._

Newt gasps in a ragged breath, tasting copper as he inhales and he knows his nose is bleeding, can feel thick globules trailing down towards his chin. His stomach twists violently. If there were anything in it, he knows he’d be throwing it up. _I know, God, please-_

_YET YOU STILL TRY TO RESIST._ The words are spoken with an air of finality, and Newt watches from within himself as the precursors stop indulging his moment of weakness. He watches as they steer him to the PONS system, as they put it on and he can feel the metal clamping around his skull. _HUMANS NEVER LEARN. WE WILL SHOW YOU THE FUTILITY OF FIGHTING._

Newt sinks down into the drift, a violent sensation of falling endlessly through space. He watches as he sails past burning planets, surely with other creatures that the precursors have trampled as they have humans. The falling ends abruptly, and for the first time in his drifts with Alice he has a physical form. It’s extremely jarring, because it isn’t him. He’s enormous, bulky and heavy and graceless in his movements. He looks around, and it’s like seeing ghosts. He sees a bridge that has long since been destroyed, the city around it thriving. The water brushing up against the shore nearby shows none of the vile toxicity it carries now from Trespasser’s body and the multiple nukes the military used. It’s San Francisco, still intact, and a horrifying wave of realisation crashes over him as his, no, Trespasser’s, no, _his_ clawed foot slams into the concrete road, cracking it and jostling the nearby cars. He hears screaming, but it’s all tinny and distant. The faces are not.

He sees from the front row seat millions of people die. Sees their faces contort into looks of horror, agony, shock, fear fear fear, the last expression they’ll ever make, stuck permanently onto their faces. He wants to look away. He wants to stop. He knows it won’t. This is a memory, the precursors’ memory of Trespasser’s six day rampage, held safe within the hivemind. And he knows they’ll make him sit through the whole agonising journey. He watches San Francisco crumble and fall apart, the Golden Gate Bridge toppled like in any good monster movie, watches so many people die that trying to keep track of it makes him dizzy. He watches military aircraft approach, feels the peppering of bullets against his flank. Knows, both from memory and from how little pain he feels, that the crafts’ artillery won’t be enough.

As he’s tearing through Oakland, the first nuke drops. It’s a direct hit, nailing the top of his back, and his throat burns with the guttural roar that Trespasser lets loose. It’s agonising, the worst pain he’s ever felt, and he wants to drop to the ground, collapse and never get back up, but he’s far too scared to. The precursors’ sent him here, sent him to feel out the lifeforms here and see what weapons they had so his brethren would come back stronger and better equipped. There is nowhere for him to return to, and so he straightens himself back up and continues through Oakland. He doesn’t see any more of the creatures, but the buildings will be in the way of their terraforming. So he knocks them down, sending one down to crush one of the jets circling him. The destruction doesn’t last much longer. Two more nukes are dropped on top of him, and he feels as if he’s melting, and he finally collapses, unable to move. He can see the ash of people who were vaporised by the nuke, bodies further away that were eviscerated by the shockwaves, burned to a crisp or sent hurtling into buildings with far more force than the human body was ever meant to handle. He sees buildings that were dropped and people who were unable to move out of the way in time, crushed beneath them and bent at impossible angles. He sees into those dropped buildings through the windows, people slammed throughout rooms and office spaces, impaled on light fixtures.

He sees so much death, is in so much pain that it is unbearable. He cries out, low moans and clicking growls as he cries for the home he’ll never get to go back to, the beautiful and infinitely swirling reds and blues and purples that have always meant safety and peace and cruelty and imprisonment. He cries out for the masters that made him, filled him with a singular purpose, one he was happy to accomplish because it was what his masters wanted of him and he would do anything they asked of him. He cries out for the pain the nukes have left him to suffer with, and he can only hope that his masters will learn from this, that they will make his brethren stronger than he so they never have to experience what he is. The aching, gnawing loneliness as he thinks of his home, and the burning of the nukes, slowly fades away as the ravaged city of Oakland slides out of focus. His eyes close, and he feels everything grow fuzzy and distant. He dies there with Trespasser, crying for a home he’s never known and can never return to.

His eyes snap open and he is in his penthouse in Shanghai. He falls out of the chair, unable to hold himself up, unable to remove the PONS, unable to do anything as bile rushes up his throat and hits the carpeted floor in front of him. He’s shaking, he can feel tears running hot trails down his cheeks, he can still feel his skin burning away layer by layer, the radiation sinking into his bones. He hears the precursors’ abstract sounds of disgust as his stomach forces out whatever it can, eventually leaving him dry heaving for a few moments before it finally stops. He sits there on the floor, shaking and miserable, and jumps when he hears a sudden dull thud nearby. His head jerks up and in front of him sits Alice’s tank. She’s floated down to the bottom of the tank, stuck there next to him. One of her tentacles is pressed against the wall of the tank, as if she’s reaching out to him. His stomach feels like a knot pulled so tight it’ll never unwind. He rests his head gently against the tank, directly over where the suction cup end of Alice’s limb rests. He sits there and breathes for as long as the precursors allow him, imagining with each exhale he is dispelling the vision of California being razed to the ground beneath his feet. It doesn’t work.

Eventually everything spins away from him, reality unspooling like a ball of yarn around him. He watches from somewhere far away as his still shaking hands scrub the vomit clean, as he gets up and moves about his apartment, exhaustion that would make him dizzy unnoticed by the precursors. In his mind, he watches the Bay Area get annihilated under his feet, caused by himself and the desperation of the military. He wonders what sort of destruction his Kaiju will cause. He wonders how many people he’ll kill, how many lives he’ll ruin. He wonders if the guilt will ever go away. He doesn’t think so. He doesn’t think it should. It’s his fault. He deserves all of this.

_THAT’S RIGHT HUMAN_ they say, and despite the volume their tone is almost soft, mock sympathy dripping from the words. _NO ONE IS COMING TO SAVE YOU. WHY WOULD THEY?_

And Newt has no answer except _They wouldn’t_.

* * *

Dr. Newton Geiszler comes to awareness completely alone.

Well, not completely. The corner of the room still holds Alice’s tank, and despite knowing she doesn’t have eyes he can feel her gaze on him. His head feels as if it weighs a ton, millions of thoughts and voices that aren’t his clambering for room. The last thing he remembers is Hermann’s hands on his face, grip gentle and voice soft as he promised to return. He feels the precursors skittering through the grooves of his brain, anger and unease amplified at the thought of Hermann returning. They’d never liked Hermann, though Newt would never understand why. Obviously, Hermann wasn’t capable of doing anything to help him.

He slumps down in the chair as much as he can being strapped down to it. The bright fluorescent lights dig into his eyes, adding to the throbbing migraine that sits uncomfortably behind his left eye. The precursors always take out their own unease on him, and he can feel the burning agony of a hundred different Kaiju, destroyed by humans or by the precursors themselves to determine how to make them stronger, more durable, more capable. He wonders if maybe that's what they’re doing to him. Melting him down so they can see the faults in his system, see how to avoid them or maybe how to subdue them better the next time around. Maybe there won’t be a next time and he’s the only one who will know the true evil the precursors are capable of. Maybe they’re just killing him so he can never speak of the past decade.

He looks down to where his arms are strapped to the chair, and with a sense of alarm terrifyingly distant he sees the skin of his arm slowly melting away. The skin sloughs off his arm and the veins revealed are still perfectly normal, disgustingly human red. He watches, transfixed, as muscles and tendons liquify and slide down his arm. The process eventually hits bone, and Newt watches as cracks form in his radius and ulna. The bones eventually splinter apart, and he can feel nausea swirling in his stomach when he sees a hint of the arm of the chair through his arm.

“Newton!”

The sound is sharp and piercing and Newt knows if he weren’t restrained he would've jumped five feet in the air at least at the sudden break of silence. As it is, he feels the cuffs dig sharply into his wrists as he jerks as best he can, wild eyes shooting up to see Hermann standing where there was empty space only a moment ago. He can feel his heart pounding in his chest. The whispers of the hivemind grow a little louder as they always do whenever his old partner appears. He feels his mouth twist into a mockery of the teasing smirk he used to give Hermann so often, and Newt thinks the precursors do it on purpose. Remind Hermann it’s him, it’s Newt, but different, Newt but a little to the left.

“Jesus, Herms, give a man some warning!” He hears himself say, and he doesn't know whether to be angry or relieved that the precursors are taking the lead here.

Hermann, who’d apparently been mid step in approaching Newt before being cut off by his response, slowly steps back to the chair still in the room and sits down carefully. Newt recognises the stiff movements immediately from years spent working together, remembers days when Hermann was particularly cranky, when he leaned on his cane a little more heavily than he usually did. It must be a bad day for him. Hermann meets his gaze evenly, not a hint of unease at the unnatural blue arcing across his face, in his eye. He looks concerned. “Newton, are you alright?”

Newt mentally reels backwards. Hermann really is concerned about him. The bruises around his neck have faded in their intensity, but they’re still very visible. Newt doesn’t understand Hermann, and the precursors understand Hermann even less. Newt gapes at him for a moment before falling back on his usual deflection method. “Oh, I’m great, Hermann. Love the view in here.”

Hermann winces, and if Newt weren’t so accustomed to hurting him he would’ve kicked himself. Hermann looks desperate, he looks concerned and scared and Newt doesn't know what to do with any of that. “Newton. Please talk to me.”

Newt looks around the room helplessly, gaze passing over Alice quickly and landing only on four blank walls. “I am talking to you.”

Hermann leans forward in the chair, knuckles white against the handle of his cane. “I don’t mean the precursors. I don’t mean this poor facsimile of you they put up. I mean _you_.”

A decade old ache twists around Newt’s ribcage. “Hate to break it to you, Herms, but there is no _me_ anymore. Whoever you knew before is long gone.”

Hermann shakes his head, something almost subtly condescending in the movement, as if they are in their lab having one of their normal arguments. The kind that scared all the techies away from the K-Sci department, the kind that Stacker reprimanded the both of them for at least once a week. “No, I don’t believe that. He’s certainly different, yes, and he’s done some outlandishly stupid things. But he’s still in there somewhere. You can’t keep him.”

Newt heaves out a pained breath, wrists digging into their restraints. For the first time in ten years, he feels like he might cry. “Hermann…” It’s as much a plea as it is a gasp for air. “What are you _doing_ here?”

Hermann looks at him funny, as if Newt’s just asked a truly stupid question. “I’m talking to my friend.”

Newt pointedly looks at the bruises on Hermann’s throat. “Some friend he is, huh.”

Hermann tilts his chin down slightly, enough to capture Newt’s mismatched gaze with his own stubborn brown one and hiding the bruises from his view in the process. “Is your memory so short? I’ve already made clear that wasn’t your fault, Newton.”

“Oh, give it a rest, Hermann,” Newt snaps, irritation creeping up his spine. “No amount of sugar coating is going to change reality.”

Hermann arches a brow at him. “Then explain it to me. How did it even get to this point, Newton?”

Newt thinks back, far back to a time when he wasn’t locked away inside himself. To the interim, after closing the Breach but before everything went downhill. “I don’t know, Hermann.” There’s vulnerability in the whispered admission, but for once the precursors don’t pounce on it. It makes him nervous. He can feel them, settled down in the grooves of his brain, waiting, always waiting. “There was something wrong from the very beginning.”

Hermann settles back into his seat, seemingly satisfied now that Newt is talking to him. He doesn't speak, simply inclining his head encouragingly.

Newt clenches his hands into fists restlessly. “I don’t know man, it was like this…” Newt tries to think of how to describe it, how he could possibly describe the sensation of a thousand eyes looking down at him, the sensation of being smaller than he should be, knowing he’d inserted himself into something he never should've but at the same time wanting _more_. “This _itch_. I knew I couldn't do anything about it, but God… Some days it was so loud. They were all I could hear. I don’t remember drifting again, but I must’ve. I started losing time. Snippets here and there. And then suddenly I was in Shanghai in a penthouse I didn’t remember buying.”

Hermann looks horrified. “Newton, why didn’t you _say_ anything?”

Newton wouldn't describe himself as an angry person. He certainly has his passions, and he isn’t quiet about them. He had his arguments with Hermann, but they were never borne of true anger. He’s always been a more go with the flow kind of guy. But in that moment, hearing Hermann say that so flabbergasted, as if he can’t believe how foolish Newton was, he sees red. He can feel himself going hazy, distant, a fuzzy quality overtaking his vision as if his contacts have been removed. The anger remains in perfect agonising clarity, and Newt feels a snarl overtake his expression.

“I _did_ , you self-absorbed bastard!” Newt snaps, and he sees Hermann’s shocked expression, feels the air in the room turn frigid and electric. “Oh, _I’m_ sorry, maybe you think _you_ could do better possessed by an ancient evil alien hive mind! God, Herms, how long have you known me?” Hermann simply stares at him, mouth hanging open dumbfounded. “I left without telling anyone! I started wearing _suits_ for Chrissakes! I went into the private sector, I started working with a _weapons manufacturer_! I _LEFT_ you! _What_ of that is totally normal Newt behaviour?!”

Newt can see the hurt in Hermann’s expression, the pain and regret and grief and God, Newt doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want that look on Hermann’s face, he doesn’t want the precursors forcing up all the ugly feelings of anger and betrayal he’s been keeping buried for the past ten years. But he can’t make them stop. He can taste copper.

“Newton, I–”

“Why do you keep coming back?” Newt’s voice has dropped from yelling and anger to a deadly whisper. “He hates you, don’t you fucking get it?” The words land like a blow, both to Hermann and Newt himself. He feels the precursors’ vice grip on his mind tightening as he slumps, defeated, watches Hermann blink away wetness in those delicate brown eyes and God, Newt hasn’t genuinely wanted to die in a while but he sure does now. “You left me alone for ten years! You never noticed anything and now you think you can sit there and talk to me like you fucking understand me? Fuck off!” Newt can feel the restraints digging into his wrists, can feel the blood gushing out of his nose, burning on its way out and he knows its blue, as if Hermann needs any additional reminder that Newt isn’t human. He can feel a traitorous wetness in his eyes spilling over, running down his cheeks.

He feels a hand on his cheek, cupping it gently. He looks up, vision in his left eye blurry, and sees Hermann, of course. It’s always Hermann. The remorse and sorrow there makes him want to look away, but he is completely incapable of moving himself.

“Newton, I am so sorry. Words cannot adequately cover how sorry I am. You’re absolutely right. I should've known you better.”

Newt takes in a shaky gasp, feels Hermann’s thumb swipe across his cheek to wipe away the tear that fell. “Hermann…” Newt’s voice comes out raspy. “Why do you keep coming here? I don’t…” He doesn’t understand it.

Hermann’s lips tug into a small, sad smile. “I’m never leaving you alone again. We are going to fix this, Newton.”

This feeling, as faint as it is, is painfully familiar, and Newt is suddenly thrown back a lifetime ago. He remembers the best and worst night of his life, feeling small against the wind and the weight of the world and the Kaiju dumped onto his shoulders. Feeling that weight lift at Hermann’s stupid, smug, cheeky little grin, as if they’re teenagers in high school passing notes. ‘ _I’ll go with you._ ’ Newt gasps. He doesn’t think it’ll be the same this time around. He doesn’t think Hermann will be able to save him this time. He doesn’t think he really deserves it, anyway.

But looking into Hermann’s fierce determination, despite the sadness and regret still ever present on his face, Newt can’t say anything against him. Can’t say anything except, “Ok, Herms.” But it makes Hermann’s smile grow a little bit, so he must’ve said something right. Hermann’s thumb carefully caresses Newt’s cheek again, no tears there to justify the action, but a firm knock on the door makes them both jump away from each other.

Hermann turns to the door with a sigh, returning to his chair and retrieving his cane before heading towards the door. He stops once he’s gripped the handle to give Newton a reassuring smile over his shoulder. “I will be back, Newton.” Newt shakes his head, disbelieving or denying or both, but Hermann’s already gone. He tilts his head back to rest against the back of the chair, eyes slipping shut. He’s so tired, of Hermann, of himself, of the precursors, of everything.

A dull thud makes him startle violently, eyes snapping open and looking around the room frantically to find the source. Finding it makes ice drip down his spine and he can feel his heart squeeze tightly. Alice’s tank still sits in the corner, and she’s no longer floating. She’s sunk to the bottom of the tank, a tentacle slapped against the glass. Something’s wrong. A sharp stab of pain in his head makes him gasp, and he can only watch as Alice quivers at the bottom of the tank. God, something’s _wrong_. And he slumps in his restraints, knowing he is as helpless against whatever’s happening now as he has been for the past ten years. He can’t do anything. Typical.


End file.
